


Before Privet Drive

by plottingalong



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Harry Potter - Freeform, Magical Petunia Evans Dursley, Misguided Albus Dumbledore, Nice Vernon Dursley, POV Petunia Evans Dursley, Squib Petunia Evans Dursley, Squibs
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-14
Updated: 2020-08-14
Packaged: 2021-03-06 01:40:39
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,004
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25895323
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/plottingalong/pseuds/plottingalong
Summary: Petunia Dursley visits her mother, under the watchful gaze of a mysterious woman across the street. Her heart is laden with doubts and secrets, as is her mother's, and if she isn't careful, her childhood may go up in flames.
Relationships: Petunia Evans Dursley & Lily Evans Potter, Petunia Evans Dursley/Vernon Dursley
Comments: 5
Kudos: 18





	Before Privet Drive

The woman had been watching the house all morning. Normally, she only gave it a few perfunctory glances through the day, to make sure it didn’t go anywhere, but that day, there was a visitor. One of the daughters had come to visit her mother. The woman across the street watched as the daughter knocked on the door and was welcomed inside. Then made herself a cup of tea and settled down, her eyes still trained on the house.  
In the house across the street, the daughter and her mother were sitting in the kitchen. 

“You haven’t been talking to Lily.” The elder said. It wasn’t a statement but an accusation, deftly handed across the table by a woman with a yellow jumper.  
“We haven’t talked in years.” Petunia Dursley replied stiffly, running her fingers against the rim of her teacup. Her mother sat on the other side of the table and regarded her sternly.  
“She told me you didn’t invite her to the wedding.”  
Petunia sipped her tea in silence. It had been a long time since she’d been somewhere without Vernon, and she missed the warm, familiar bulk standing behind her, a bulwark.  
“You and Lily are sisters, whether you like it or not. Speak to her. She’s broken up over the fact you didn’t invite her.”  
“Good.” Petunia said viciously. When her mother glanced at her in shock, she explained in a rush of words. “Mother, I want a child, a house, a normal life, without Lily and all the strange things that come with her.”  
“Oh come on.” Rose sighed. She suddenly seemed very old. “You’ve always resented her for her magic.” It was more than that, of course, Rose thought to herself. She knew her daughters. Petunia didn’t resent Lily. It had been something else, something deeper. She didn’t know what it was. When the letter first came for Lily she could’ve sworn she’d seen it once before, as if in a past life. But she hadn’t, of course. That was impossible.  
“That isn’t true. I resented the fact that you and father couldn’t recognize that she belonged in a madhouse, not a special school. I resented I could never lead a normal life. Well, I will now. Lily will no longer have anything to do with me.” Petunia sipped her tea angrily. She loved this house, with its pleasant mundanity. The house had always felt like a place devoid of secrets. It only became filled with shadows when Lily came home, Lily who brought with her questions Petunia couldn’t get out of her head, Lily who brought with her a sense of unease, a feeling that Petunia had forgotten something, or lost it, just for a moment. The rest of the time, she knew exactly what was going on, she knew her parents better than anyone else. They had no secrets from her.  
“Petunia,” Rose pleaded. “She’s your only sister.” Sometimes Rose wished the girls’ father was alive. Not her husband, sound asleep upstairs, but rather their biological father, who Rose suspected had something to do with the whole thing. The girls had never known about him, of course. Maybe he could’ve solved the mess between her two daughters.  
“Not anymore.” Petunia stormed out of the house and slammed the door behind her. She burst into tears the moment she stepped off the porch. She had almost reached the curb when the house exploded.  
Later, she was told it was a gas leak, but Petunia knew it wasn’t. She knew she had caused that explosion, just like Lily had caused all those freak accidents years ago. The first responders carried what remained of her mother out on a stretcher. Petunia stared across the street. A neighbor was watching from her yard. Petunia had known her since she was a child. She used to babysit them on weekends, with her endless array of cats. The woman’s eyes left the burning building and turned to Petunia. She nodded to herself once, as if confirming something, and disappeared back into her house.  
Petunia was still watching the smouldering wreckage, mourning the normal life she’d tried to regain, when Vernon’s heavy hands fell on her shoulders.  
“What happened?” he grunted.  
She would never tell him she’d done it. He would never forgive her, never see her as normal again.  
“Gas explosion.” she replied. That, she decided, was all that could have happened. For her own sake. There was no magic, no freak accidents, no Lily. She was normal, and everything was as it should be. Petunia hugged Vernon and closed her eyes against the world. Then she bent over and threw up all over the asphalt. A kindly paramedic told her it was just shock. It would be a few weeks until she discovered it wasn’t.  
In the house across the street, the old woman started writing a letter. She mumbled to her cats as she wrote.  
“I’d always thought it was Lily I had to keep an eye on. I see now why they kept me here even after she moved to Godric’s Hollow. It wasn’t her at all, it was the other one, all twisted, all deformed. Dumbledore was right to Obliviate her, kinder that way, he knows how hard it is, with his poor sister and everything. Who knows what sort of damage she could do….” The woman sealed the letter and addressed it to the Ministry of Magic in big, sloping letters.  
“I guess I’ll have to keep a closer eye on her from now on, eh?” She muttered. A large owl took her letter in its beak and swooped off. The woman watched it vanish in the distance.  
“Always rotten luck for us Squibs, isn’t it?” she sighed. Then she started packing. By the next day, she and her cats were already exploring their new house at number 21, Privet Drive.  
“It will do,” Arabella Figg said, satisfied, looking out her window and out onto the street, where she could clearly see number four. “It will do.”


End file.
